“From this uttermost end of the north it will not be
easy, or indeed possible, to send anything to the West Indies, except what will
go in the compass of a letter; else you should have the Iris’s* bundled up for you. . . . . My plan for
Madoc stands, then, at
present, that Longman shall risk all
expenses, and share the eventual profits; printing it in quarto, and with
engravings, for I am sure the book will sell the better for being made
expensive. Having now cleared off all my Annual Reviewing (oh Tom,
such a batch I almost as much as last year’s rabble) I am now for a while
at full leisure, and of course direct it principally to Madoc, that it may be off my hands, for I should not be willing to
leave the world till I have left that in a fair state behind me. I am now
finishing the 14th section. . . . . They tell me that Walter Scott has reviewedAmadis

in the Edinburgh
Review; to what purport I know not, but probably a favourable one,
if it be his doing, for he is a man whose taste accords with mine, and who,
though we have never seen each other, knows that I respect him, as he, on his
part, respects me. The same friendly office has been performed in the Critical at last for Thalaba, by William Taylor—this, too, I have not
seen.

“As for politics, Tom, we that live among the mountains, as the old woman said,
do never hear a word of news. This talk of war with Spain I do not believe, and
I am at last come round to the opinion that no invasion is intended, but that
the sole object of Bonaparte is to exhaust
our finances. Booby! not remembering that a national bankruptcy, while it ruins
individuals, makes the state rich. . . . . How long the present Duncery may go
on, God knows; I am no enemy to them, for they mean well, but in this broil
with the Volunteers they are wrong, and dangerously wrong as regards their own
popularity. I wish every Volunteer would lay down his arms,—being fully
persuaded that in case of necessity he would take them up again;—but this
attempt to increase the system of patronage, by depriving them of their
covenanted right of electing their own officers, is rascally and abominable.
The elections universally made, show that the choice always falls upon men who
have either the claim of property, character, or talents. Of more permanent
political importance will be a circumstance of which there is no talk of at
all. Inquiries are making into the actual state of the poor in England, an
office has

256

LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE

Ætat. 29.

been established for the purpose, and the
superintendence, by Rickman’s
recommendation, assigned to Poole,
Coleridge’s friend, of whom
you must have heard me speak,—a man of extraordinary powers, more akin in
mind to Rickman than any man I know. This is a very
gratifying circumstance to me, to see so many persons, with whom I became
acquainted before the world did, rising in the world to their proper stations.
. . . .

“God bless you!

R. S.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
English poet and philosopher who projected Lyrical Ballads (1798)
with William Wordsworth; author of Biographia Literaria (1817), On the Constitution of the Church and State (1829) and other
works.

Thomas Norton Longman (1771-1842)
A leading London publisher whose authors included Southey, Wordsworth, Scott, and
Moore.

Emperor Napoleon I (1769-1821)
Military leader, First Consul (1799), and Emperor of the French (1804), after his
abdication he was exiled to Elba (1814); after his defeat at Waterloo he was exiled to St.
Helena (1815).

Thomas Poole (1766-1837)
Of Nether Stowey; he was a farmer, tanner, and the early friend of Samuel Taylor
Coleridge.

John Rickman (1771-1840)
Educated at Magdalen Hall and Lincoln College, Oxford, he was statistician and clerk to
the House of Commons and an early friend of Charles Lamb and Robert Southey.

Thomas Southey (1777-1838)
The younger brother of Robert Southey; he was a naval captain (1811) and afterwards a
Customs officer. He published A Chronological History of the West
Indies (1828).

William Taylor of Norwich (1765-1836)
Translator, poet, and essayist; he was a pupil of Anna Letitia Barbauld and correspondent
of Robert Southey who contributed to the Monthly Magazine, the Monthly Review, the Critical Review, and
other periodicals.

The Critical Review, or, Annals of Literature. (1756-1817). Originally conducted by Tobias Smollett, the Critical Review began
as a rival to the Monthly Review, begun in 1749. It survived for 144
volumes before falling prey to the more fashionable quarterlies of the nineteenth
century.